But he also tells us to "Give unto God the things that belong to God." God and Caesar! Behold the two masters, from neither of which did Jesus deliver man. And how do we give unto God the things that belong to God? If we give it to the priests, will it reach God—and how much of it will reach him? Moreover, if we are to tell the things that belong to Caesar by the stamp upon them, how are we to tell the things that belong to God? And how did the deity come to let Caesar in as a partner? And what will there be left for us after God and Caesar have had each his share? It is difficult to understand how the robust occidental can find any moral uplift or guidance in so whimsical a piece of advice. Jesus was asked a great question, the question of political autonomy and international law, but he gave to it a trifling answer.
Let us take another example. I have more than once called your attention to the story of the thief on the cross. There were really two of them. To one of them Jesus promised paradise. What became of the other? Both men were malefactors, but one of them believed in Jesus and became a saint at the last moment. Can anything be more immoral? Can anything be more arbitrary or fatalistic? If we wished to show that it made no difference how people lived, and that the only thing that saves is faith, which is as effective at the eleventh hour as at the first—we could not have invented a better argument than is furnished by this story in the gospels.
Observe that the man magically saved, as this malefactor was, becomes meaner and more selfish after he is converted than he was before. He imagines that God is just waiting yonder to welcome him, and that heaven is being put in order for his reception,—while his crime sinks into a mere nothing in his eyes. Like the thief on the cross, he has not a single thought of his victims—not a single pang of remorse for the suffering he has caused. Conversion has made him callous. Whether his victims are saved or damned, he does not care. All his thoughts are centered upon his own future happiness and glory. But suppose the thief on the cross had said to Jesus when the latter invited him to paradise: "But, what about my victims, Lord? The men and women and children I have ruined and sent to their doom! How can I be happy in heaven, with my victims in hell—to whom I gave no chance in the last hour to believe and be saved? Hanging on the same cross with you, Lord, has made my heart a little more tender, and has awakened my conscience. I have become a better man since I met you. Let me then go where I can atone in some real way for my crimes. Let my heaven consist in serving the people I have wronged, until we can be saved together." If Jesus had only provoked that for a reply from the converted thief!
Compare with this puffed-up vanity and meanness of the malefactor converted by miracle, the glorious behavior of Othello in the presence of death. Jesus' company made the thief on the cross contemptible; Shakespeare's touch made Othello divine. As he is about to leap into the arms of death, Othello is not thinking of his soul, or of his future; his one and only thought is of his victim. He does not whine in the ears of heaven, nor does he beg to be saved from the punishment he deserves. He is no coward trying to sneak into heaven while his Desdemona lies in her blood at his feet. Listen to the words the great poet speaks by his mouth:
Whip me, ye devils,
From the possession of this heavenly sight!
Blow me about in winds! Roast me in sulphur!
Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!
No vision of heaven, no thought of glory for himself, can tempt Othello to forget his crime. He prefers hell for himself as the only thing with which his awakened conscience can be calmed. That is the way to be converted!
The Christian doctrine of forgiveness is the doctrine of license. Jesus commands us to forgive "seventy times seven." He does not seem to realize that the more accommodating we are to the criminal, the more we sap the foundations of morality. "Judge not," says Jesus, "that ye be not judged." That is very queer advice. We are not to see wrong or crime in others lest they should find the same in us. It is the religion of a guilty conscience—which abstains from criticising lest his own faults should be exposed. "You say nothing about me and I'll agree to say nothing about you," is a conspiracy to defeat justice. "For with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged," continues Jesus. Not at all. If a man has slandered you, must you slander him? If you have been robbed, must you rob in return? Do you have to judge another with the same prejudice, bigotry and malice with which he judges you? And must you refrain from passing any righteous judgments from fear of being misjudged or misunderstood by the world? Were we to follow this false teaching, we would be giving crime a free sway,—with every tongue tied against it.
But did not Jesus say "Love one another," and is not that enough? If it were enough, the past twenty centuries would have been centuries of peace and brotherhood. Instead, they have been centuries of war and persecution. The world is in need of a Jesus who can make people love. If Jesus has this power—why is Europe still armed to the teeth? I do not deny the good intentions of Jesus. I question his power. He has not even succeeded in making his own followers, Catholics and Protestants, to love one another. Christianity has had a good, long chance to show results. A religion which is split up into an ever-increasing number of sects is not going to bring about unity and brotherhood. "He that believeth not shall be damned," and "depart from me ye cursed," takes from the rose of love both petals and perfume, and leaves only the thorns.
But Jesus also said "Love your enemies." The advice of Confucius to "love our benefactors and to be just to our enemies," is more sensible. It is neither practical nor desirable to love one's enemies. Can we love the slanderer, the oppressor, the murderer? If our "enemy" is not all this, he is not an enemy. But we can be just to the people who are mean, deceitful, spiteful or pitiless toward us. Did Jesus love his enemies? Why then was not Judas saved? And why did he say to his disciples that for the people who rejected them there awaited the awful fate of Sodom and Gomorrah?
But did not Jesus pray for his murderers on the cross? Was his prayer answered? If there is any truth in history, the Jews have suffered for their supposed participation in the tragedy of Calvary more than words can describe. I have always thought that the prayer, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," was put in Jesus' mouth, at the last moment, for a theatrical effect. If the atonement was one of the eternal decrees of God, the people who put Jesus to death were only carrying it out. If, however, knowing that Jesus was a God, they, nevertheless, wanted to kill him, they must have been imbeciles to suppose a God could be murdered safely; but if they did not know the truth and committed the crime ignorantly, they were not forgiven for it, and the bible describes the fearful punishment prepared for them.